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Album: By Country | By Date India | May 2001 < Prev: Khajuraho's West Temple Group Continued | Next: Varanasi, Holy City on a Sacred River >
Travelogue: By Country | By Date India | May 2001  

May 2001 - On the Train to Varanasi

One of the things we enjoy most is just looking out the windows of the bus or train. No monuments or temples or historic sites but perhaps a more representative view of India

On this train, we traveled first class.  In the scale of things, that's really something like fourth class, coming below the three air conditioned classes.  But in first class there is a lockable door to the compartment.  There's nothing wrong with first class that a good scrubbing couldn't fix.  Unfortunately, there's no sign this car has seen soap and water since it was built.  Note that Mark has even wrapped his elbow in his sheetsack! Since it's not air conditioned, we can open the windows.  (Actually, it's so hot that we never closed them.)  That makes the train as fun to look out of as the bus.  These aren't great pictures, but they show more of what we have seen when we travel from place to place. Maggie looking out of the window . . . and ready to get sick.  About two hours before we left Khajuraho by car to catch the train, Maggie got sick.  She was sick nearly the entire train ride.  Yet, she didn't complain, didn't whine, and didn't cry.  Looking out the window
Temple? One problem with being a tourist is that we only go places that are big enough to accomodate and feed us.  That means our only glimpse of most of the country is out the windows of the train or the bus. Remains of a bath Shrine
Stacks of cow dung ready to be mixed and shaped into burnable size and form. The bright fabrics are like bright flowers laundry
Looks like the Midwest Kids Town Crossing
Cows.  Some of the cows here appear to have nearly hairless hides.  The first few times I saw them, "rhino" is what went through my mind.